Blue Mont Central College was a private, Methodist institute of higher learning located in Manhattan, Kansas, United States. The college was incorporated in February 1858, and was the forerunner of Kansas State University. After Kansas became a U.S. state in 1861, the directors of Blue Mont Central College offered the school's three-story building and of its property to the State of Kansas to become the state's university. A bill accepting this offer easily passed the Kansas Legislature in 1861, but was controversially vetoed by Governor Charles L. Robinson of Lawrence, and an attempt to override the veto in the legislature failed by two votes. In 1862, another bill to accept the offer failed by one vote. Finally, on the third attempt, on February 16, 1863, the state enacted a law accepting the college building and grounds, and establishing the state's land-grant college at the site – the institution that would become Kansas State University. Blue Mont Central College ceased operations later that year after the school term was completed. History The founding of the college was intertwined with the efforts of the New England Emigrant Aid Company to establish the town of Manhattan, Kansas, in 1855 as part of the effort to keep Kansas Territory from becoming a slave state. The co-founder of the Emigrant Aid Company, Eli Thayer, wrote that the towns established by the Company should emphasize education: "to go with all our free-labor trophies: churches and schools, printing presses, steam-engines, and mills; and in a peaceful contest convince every poor man from the South of the superiority of free labor." Among the founders of Manhattan was Isaac Goodnow, a professor from Providence, Rhode Island. Goodnow led the New England Emigrant Aid Company's efforts to create a college in Manhattan. The creation of Blue Mont Central College was formally proposed by Goodnow at a Methodist conference held in Nebraska City, Nebraska, in April 1857. The conference approved the creation of the school and appointed Goodnow and his brother-in-law Joseph Denison agents for the college. The school was then chartered by an act of the Kansas Territorial legislature, signed by Territorial Governor James W. Denver on February 9, 1858—making it one of the first three institutes of higher education incorporated in Kansas Territory, all of which were incorporated on that date. It would take another two years, however, before the school was ready to open. Operations The cornerstone for